Zach Rubin

Tick-tock… just a few days left to submit your article for the IAA Prize for the Best Article of an Early Career Scholar! Don’t miss the chance to be recognized—details here: iaassyriology.com/iaa-prize/ #Assyriology #Archaeology #Mesopotamia

Photo of a cuneiform tablet viewed from the front, back, sides, and top. A sealing interrupts the text on the back of the tablet, which is in the bottom half of the photo. The sealing can also be seen along the top and the sides.

In 1748 BCE, a man feels so “discredited” by a woman named Amertum that he declares before 13 witnesses:

“As long as she talks, I will not bring her into my house.”

It’s a flawlessly preserved legal record of a bizarre situation.

Selfie of a smiling woman holding a shiny book entitled Between Two Rivers. The bottom half of the book cover is slightly obscured by her hand. She wears a dark grey sweatshirt

advance copies have arrived and if it looks like i’m trying to hug it, that’s because i am 🥹

Photo of a broken clay tablet fragment seen from the front, back, and sides. There is a British Museum watermark at the bottom of the image.

If it looks like there are two different fonts on this clay tablet from ancient Babylon, that’s because there are.

In December of 603 BCE, a young scribe named Balāṭa made a faithful copy of a far more ancient inscription of Sîn-Kashid who had ruled Uruk over 1,000 years earlier.

A clay cuneiform text with Old Babylonian recipes inscribed on it, 18th century BCE.

"When I came to Babylon, for the messengers of Zimri-Lim (king of Mari) there were unending servings of pork, fish, fowl, and nuts, while I was totally ignored!" Here's hoping your festivities are happier than those of this ancient messenger! ARM 26 384, J. M. Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 88.

Internally screaming with ALL the enormous emotions that my book made it onto this list @theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com/culture/2024...

The second circular for the #RAI70Prague is now available at rai70.ff.cuni.cz There will be 24 open workshops plus the main track. The abstract submission will start on January 1, 2025 @IAAssyriology @FF_CUNI @Orientalniustav #cuneiform #IANESPrague #assyriology

Fragment of a cuneiform tablet against a black background. A ruler at the bottom of the image shows that it is about 2cm wide

Although just a tiny fragment, this cuneiform tablet tells us about a child having seizures in the 7th century BCE.

A medical professional reports, “Seizure keeps attacking him. I prepared the stones and prophylactery against seizure and put them upon him” cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/33...

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume?

Assyriologist: Du[ring] grad sch[ool] I [took?] a position ... [13 lines illegible] ... now.

📣 [RAI70] Call for papers - Workshop

Assyriologists, archaeologists and specialists working on Western Asia, please find our call for papers for our workshop at the #70RAIPrague : "Local power and urban institutions in ancient Western Asia during the 2nd millennium BCE" ⬇️

@ili-yahu.bsky.social

Wish you could enjoy watching the Poor Man of Nippur in its original language of Akkadian? You can!

The Assyriology community at the University of Cambridge completed this project a few years back and it is a certified classic:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxYo...

CFP

CfP from CUNY GC Classics Students!

Landscape Features of the Ancient World

a hybrid conference: May 2, 2025.

Send abstracts to: cunyclassicsconference@gmail.com

Due: January 31, 2025

#classicsGC #HumanitiesGC @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social

Stone relief of a hybrid creature with the lower body of a lion with four legs and a tail, and the upper body of a bearded man with a conical hat. The creature appears in profile. The stone is greyish beige

I love the hybrid creatures from ancient Mesopotamia. They hint at what scared people, what protected them, and more.

This is a “lion man” (urmahlilu), a magical creature that once flanked the entrance to King Ashurbanipal’s palace in Nineveh to protect against harm.

#Assyriology postdoc opportunity at ISAC UChicago with the #Nippur Tablet Collection. 🏺
Deadline end of January. apply.interfolio.com/160845

EOE/Vet/Disability

Ancient stone stele with an image of Ushumgal, a bearded male figure wearing a skirt and standing in front of a building, with a cuneiform inscription above him.

Ancient stone stele with an image of Shara-igizi-Abzu, a female figure wearing a dress and holding an object in her hand, with a cuneiform inscription in front of and above her.

These two people, Shara-igizi-Abzu and her father Ushumgal, are two of the earliest people on Earth whose names are recorded on their images, c. 2900 BCE. He was a Mesopotamian priest, apparently giving land, houses, and animals to his daughter. Met 58.29. See Weavers, Scribes, and Kings, Ch. 3.

PhD scholarships at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

Open call for PhD scholarships (fully funded) at my department, possible subject areas include Assyriology, West Asian Archaeology, Egyptology, Modern Middle Eastern Studies (one is earmarked for Turkish studies) and many more!

employment.ku.dk/phd/?show=16...

I had a quiet moment with a swan once. And then it hissed at me. Those things are scary!!

Heartbreak and the History of Distress in Ancient Mesopotamia - The Ancient Near East Today The concept of “heartbreak” appears multiple times in cuneiform texts as a metaphor to describe both mental and physical conditions. How should we interpret this phrase? And is it anything like heartb...

Last year, I wrote a brief article about how the heart “breaks” in ancient Mesopotamia. What could a broken heart have meant 3,000 years ago, and how did people express mental distress?

To me, how they made emotional pain make sense is really moving anetoday.org/al-rashid-he...

Join the fun! 🤩

urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Abandoned Assyrian capital brought to life in new magnetic survey The first geophysical survey of an important Middle Eastern archaeological site overturns long-held assumptions about its history

“The data revealed the location of the city’s water gate, possible palace gardens, and five enormous buildings, including a 127-room villa twice the size of the U.S. White House.”

An episode in archaeology without (yet) digging.

With thanks to @cosmicrami.com! news.agu.org/press-releas...

A simple black and white cartoon drawing. Three figures are standing at a bar counter, and there is a simple cup/glass next to each figure. The three figures represent different viewpoints: The figure on the left, labeled "Optimist," has a happy expression and text next to it that says "The glass is half-full." The figure in the middle, labeled "Pessimist," has a sad expression and text next to it that says "The glass is half-empty." The figure on the right, labeled "Archaeologist," has a hat and a slightly amused expression. The text next to it states "The glass is ritual."

It's ritual!

#archaeology 🏺

Black and white photo of a broken clay tablet, partially preserving 13 columns of text, and a second fragment with an irregular shape that preserves 8 columns of text

This list of Sumerian words, like a very ancient dictionary, dates to ~2300 BCE from the ancient city of Ebla.

Remarkably, one of the words listed is sha-zu, which means “midwife” (“one who knows the inside”).

A midwife in a 4,300-year-old clay tablet cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/24...

Vorderasiatische #Archäologie & #Archäoinformatik der FU Berlin sucht noch immer Unterstützung bei Verwaltungs- & Kommunikationsaufgaben... spread the word and/or apply (bis 16.12.)

This is such a great question and I get asked this a lot, so here is a really brief thread on some accessible, excellent books on ancient Mesopotamia 😎

Parthian hedgehog from Nippur. Top 10 Mesopotamian artifact list. 🏺

Two broken tablets pieced together to make up a joined-up fragment that is photographed from the front, back, and sides. One fragment is lighter beige than the other which is more of a light brown. The tablets are covered in partly damaged cuneiform script. At the bottom, a multicoloured ruler with the British Museum watermark shows it to be 5cm wide. Below the screenshot photo is the credit: “Photography by Ivor Kerslake (LMU Munich), copyright The Trustees of the British Museum”

Star gazers in ancient Mesopotamia focused on recurring stuff like planetary motion, but sometimes they wrote about meteors.

Watching from Babylon, one wrote: “Night of the 7th, last part of the night, a meteor which was very bright in the middle of the sky” oracc.museum.upenn.edu//adsd/adart1...

A rectangular cuneiform tablet. The front and back and sides are shown. On the front are some partially erased cuneiform signs. The watermark is for the Yale Babylonian Collection.

Obverse of a clay tablet with some partially erased cuneiform signs, next to a measurement that shows it is about 5cm long and a watermark for the British museum

Close-up of the left side of a cuneiform tablet showing smeared fingerprints and partially erased cuneiform signs

The beauty of an attempt to erase stuff in clay is that it can leave behind ancient smeared and smudged fingerprints.

This tablet from Uruk, dated to the 600s BCE (or later), might be a school exercise text showing some partially erased cuneiform signs collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Recor...

Tuppi finally has a friend. Slowly but surely surrounding myself with cute research plushies.

Paw prints prove that good boys and girls have been casually walking across wet concrete (actually drying Mesopotamian mudbricks, in this case) for thousands of years. (Penn Museum B16461, Hearst Museum PAHMA 9-1765, VA Bab 04060.005, British Museum 137495)